6.  The applicant was born in 1969 and lives in Novoaltaysk, in the Altay region.
7.  In 1987 the General Secretary of the USSR Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev presented his “basic theses”, which laid the political foundation for economic reform heralding the transition to a market economy. Several laws were enacted which opened up the State-dominated planned economy to private enterprise. However, the Government preferred to keep control over consumer prices rather than leaving them to be determined by the free market.
8.  By 1990 Government spending increased sharply as a growing number of unprofitable enterprises required State support, whereas more resources were diverted to subsidise consumer prices. At the same time, the elimination of central control over production decisions, especially in the consumer-goods sector, led to a breakdown in traditional supply-demand relationships. This resulted in pervasive shortages of food and basic consumer goods. The Government reacted by introducing ration stamps for food and certain hygiene articles.
9.  In addition to ration stamps, the Government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR)[1] put into circulation several types of so-called “commodity bonds” (товарные чеки) which gave their bearers the right to purchase consumer goods, such as refrigerators, washing machines, tape recorders and passenger cars. The Urozhay-90 (“Harvest-90”) bonds were one of many types of bonds; they were distributed among agricultural workers and companies which had sold grain and other agricultural produce to the State in 1990 and 1991. Those bonds were designed to encourage agricultural workers to sell produce to the State in exchange for the right to priority purchasing of goods in high demand (see paragraph 21 below). The State paid workers for the produce at fixed prices and also gave them bonds in amounts proportionate to the value of the produce sold.
10.  The Urozhay-90 bonds were not legal tender, but they had a certain nominal value indicated on their face. That value determined the maximum purchase price of consumer goods which could be sold on production of the bonds. The bonds were not intended for payment but merely for certification of the right to purchase specific goods; the sale of goods was conditional on payment of the full purchase price by the bond-holder and production of the bonds for the same amount. The bonds were not registered in the person's name or otherwise personalised and the Government Resolution did not prevent them from being transferred among individuals and legal entities.
11.  On 2 January 1992 the Russian Government decided to put an end to the regulation of retail prices. Shops began to fill up with merchandise but prices increased at a staggering speed (the inflation rate in 1992 was 2,600%). In March 1992, the Government established that goods available under the bonds would be sold at the prices fixed before 2 January 1992 (see paragraph 22 below).
12.  In August 1992 the Government introduced the possibility of buying out the bonds with a coefficient of 10. In 1994, the coefficient was raised to 70 (see paragraphs 23 and 24 below). It appears that a significant number of bonds were bought out by the State before the buyout operations were stopped in 1996 (see paragraph 26 below).
13.  In 1995 the status of the commodity bonds was codified in the Commodity Bonds Act passed by Parliament (see paragraph 25 below). Its text was very laconic, shorter than one page, but it purported to cover every type of commodities bonds issued in previous years. Section 1 recognised the commodity bonds as part of the internal debt of the Russian Federation; section 2 fixed at ten years the limitation period for the obligations arising out of commodity bonds (the starting date was not specified); section 3 required the Government to adopt a programme for settlement of the internal debt.
14.  In 2000 the Government presented the programme for settlement of the internal debt (see paragraph 28 below). It covered every type of commodity bond, save for the Urozhay-90 bonds. A few months before the Commodity Bonds Act was amended so as to provide that the settlement of the debt under the Urozhay-90 bonds would be regulated by a special federal law (see paragraph 27 below).
15.  Between 2003 and 2009 the application of section 1 of the Commodity Bonds Act was suspended in the part concerning the Urozhay-90 bonds, in accordance with the laws on the federal budget for each successive year (see paragraph 29 below).
16.  In 2009 Parliament passed a law on the buyout of the Urozhay-90 bonds and the Government issued implementing regulations which set out a detailed procedure for buyout of the bonds (see paragraphs 30 and 31 below).
17.  The applicant holds Urozhay-90 bonds with a total nominal value of 152,200 non-denominated Russian roubles (RUR).
18.  In 2001 the applicant brought an action against the Russian Government and Ministry of Finance seeking to recover the current value of his bonds. He argued that in 1991 a holder of bonds worth RUR 16,000 could exchange them for a Russian-made passenger car.
19.  On 26 December 2001 the Novyy Altay Town Court of the Altay Region granted the applicant's claim. It awarded him 1,246,919 Russian roubles (RUB) which represented the nominal value of the bonds divided by 16,000 and multiplied by the current price of a passenger car (RUB 113,770).
20.  On 27 February 2002 the Altay Regional Court quashed the judgment of 26 December 2001. It held that the Commodity Bonds Act had not yet been implemented in the part concerning the Urozhay-90 bonds and the first-instance court had erroneously found that the bonds had been mature for redemption. It noted that “the determination of the claim... without regard to particular features of the underlying relationships, would negatively affect the channelling of budgetary resources...”